I have a theory, and it’s only a theory, so accept it or not as you wish. My granddad, Lance Corporal Tommy Bennett of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry took part in the Christmas Truce in 1914. It wasn’t one isolated incident, meetings took place up and down the lines where English and German troops faced each other across No Man’s Land.

Some years ago I was talking to my German friend, Gunnar Wiegand, about this and he told me that the unofficial truce on Christmas Eve 1914 wasn’t something that was known about in Germany, however there were stories of troops in earlier wars (Napoleonic times) meeting up at Christmas to share festivities. Indeed in the days when wars were fought hand-to-hand the troops would sometimes trade across the lines when battles were not raging – without permission from their officers, of course.

My theory is that the 1914 Christmas truce was not a one-off, but it is very probably notable for being the last Christmas truce between opposing armies. As wars became less personal, and more reliant on artillery and air raids to kill from a distance, common soldiers lost the opportunity and the wish, to meet their opposite number in peace.

Grandpa didn’t talk much about his time in the trenches, except in very general terms, but Mum told me the story some years later, after he’d died. I wish I’d been able to question him about it, but I was too late. The story always resonated with me, and some years later, as part of Artisan, I recorded Mike Harding’s song about Christmas Eve 1914. Here it is: http://artisan-harmony.com/Soundfiles%20fullsongs/artisan-christmaseve1914.mp3

Reblogged from my Wordpress blog

I'd forgotten this until I stumbled across again it this evening. It's the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts graduation video 2002, with my daughter G appearing briefly at 3.14 min  to 3.17 min. I told you it was brief. But what a talented lot, eh? She got her degree certificate handed to her by Paul McCartney.

For anghara . A few years ago my daughter and son in law took a year off from their day jobs to make some mountain biking DVDs that went into worldwide distribution. This was the trailer for their third one, Anti Gravity Unhinged, filmed in South Africa, Europe and the UK. Most of the trailer is South African footage (Ian was born and brought up in Durban).

This week's been a riot of being dragged in various different directions

* Meeting about 5 x 400 ft windmills that some idiot wants to erect within half a km of the village

* Chasing up possible quarrying plans that have been stealthily included in the council's planning framework for which consultations ended before anybody knew about it. (In a cabinet marked 'Beware of the Leopard' in the planning ofice, I suspect.)

* Starting alterations to the magic-pirate-adventure-quest novel as requested by new agent-lady. (No elves; some backstory; more sex; change of main character from a pirate to a privateer etc.)

* Meeting to plan the Mighty Zulu Nation's upcoming showcase at the festival organiser's conference

* Hair appointment.

* Three trips to the gym. One to the cinema (Don't go see The Men Who Stair at Goats. All the best bits are in the trailer.)

* Trip to an amzing little textile museum in Skelmanthorpe - a cottage owned and run by one very elderly but knowledgeable man who is a resource all by himself. The cottage is as-was

* Supplying sympathy to BB who has something suspiciously pig-fluey but might just be a lousy cold and cough (which he almost never gets).

So I missed armistice day completely. I was (unexpectedly) in the hairdressers at 11.00 on 11/11 having expected to be out before then.

So here are mine:
Grandpa: Tommy Bennett, Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Served 1914-1917. Invalided out at Passchendale


Leeman Poulter: Mum's first fiancee, navigator. Shot down over Germany 1942 approx. MIA He might have been my dad...except i wouldn't be me, would I... Weird thought.


Mum: Joan Lockyer, NAAFI (How come the landgirls all got medals recently and the Naafi conscripts didn't?)


Dad: Tony Lockyer 9th Queens Royal Lancers (tank regiment) Drove a tank across the Western Desert (El Alamein) and was a 'D-Day dodger' fighting in Italy. Met Mum in 1948


Lest we forget.

Number One Daughter and new husband came up at the weekend on their way up to and down from Newcastle where son-in-law, I, completed the Great North Run.

Well done!

I'm just starting to upload some of the photos I took on our trip to Henley for Number One Daughter's wedding at the end of August. We hired a cottage - well actually it was half a boathouse in the middle of town with its toes in the Thames. Not cheap, but very well appointed and well worth the price just to be able to step out of the patio doors and sit on the edge of the private dock. It was a lovely place for the bride to get ready and to 'leave' from - though I missed that because I was doing the buffet at the hall all morning. Anyhow here are some photos of the place. More soon.

The Bedford Boys on the Dock


Peaceful Evening on the Thames at Henley from the Private Dock


Living Area


View from the Living Area

Number One Son is home safe from Rome and here all summer until he heads for the US and Princeton at the beginning of September. So now we are three again. (Actually, if you count Tanglefoot - the Canadian band staying with us, we are - strictly speaking - eight tonight.)

I spent a very frustrating three hours of drive-time (plus an hour wait time for flight delays) trying to negotiate traffic to the Leeds/Bradford airport and back again in the middle of the afternoon. Whichever way you go you just can't avoid nose to tail traffic even before three p.m.. The Leeds ring road was stop-go for half an hour so on the way back I cut off on the M621 to the M62, aiming to wend my way via the Brighouse exit... and then I still crawled bumper to bumper from the motorway sliproad all the way to the outskirts of Huddersfield where a short but necessary trip to the supermarket delayed us until the worst of the traffic had begin to melt away.

This week has been somewhat unusual because Number One Son, J, is home from Rome for the week. It seems almost strange to have him in his room again as he's been away for huge chunks of the last eight or nine years and usually when he does come home he's dashing up and down seeing people. This week, however he's in residence and it's been lovely to have him just hanging around. He's busy doing all sorts of administrative bits and pieces prior to starting a five year PhD at Princeton in September, so there's been all the choosing of accommodation options and the sorting out of childhood vaccination records for the medical forms. It's like sending him off to university all over again - for the fourth time, as there have already been departures for Cambridge, Cooper Union (Manhattan) and the British School (Rome).

BB and I took him and my mum to Castle Howard for the day, yesterday. We made sandwiches and ate them in the car sheltering from the not-as-warm-as-it-might-have-been breeze, but considering it's still April the weather wan't too bad. White cloudy skies, light breeze and if the promised sunny spells didn't present themselves at least it didn't rain until we were almost home. How very English.


Number One Son wanted to ogle the house because it was designed by Vanbrugh three hundred or so years ago and Vanbrugh was James Sterling's favourite architect and N1S is making a film about Sterling's architecture. We just wanted to ogle the rooms and the pretties and have a mooch around the grounds, taking photographs. Not incompatible objectives.

So we ogled house, pretties and grounds, walking back through Roy Wood with numerous varieties of flowering cherries and delightful clumps of primroses, then had conversations with a noisy peacock, ate a clotted cream tea and came home through only a modest traffic jam. Very pleasant.

It's my mum's 84th birthday today. I took this pic on New Year's Day.

Number one daughter and her partner are flat hunting in London. Does anyone have any contacts or ideas? Their budget is £300 per week max. Daughter works in Hammersmith. Partner in Canary Wharf.